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Yes, it's true....DVD sets for Garfield and
Friends have been released. Not cheapie DVDs of random
episodes...total chronological box sets. Some kind of miracle
must have happened...or some really bad movie happened that needs
a tie-in. This was one of my favorite shows as a kid, and I was
certain almost no show I grew up with would be released in a good
format until my generation was in middle-age and the big
corporations were finally interested in cashing in on our
nostalgia. At least I know I won't be seeing Darkwing Duck or
Talespin in collectible format until that point. And when I do,
half the DVDs will be full of "games" no one plays and
a music video by a 9-year-old who calls himself "Baby Cool
F." But for Garfield, they were good to us.

Unfortunately, the DVD sets contain no
bonus features whatsoever. That's right, no interviews,
commentaries, animatics or making-of scenes. If you want to know
more about the creative process or interesting trivia, sucks to
be you. BUT....I just happen to have a treasure trove of such
info! Once again, it's up to me and my site. On this page, we're
going to bring you all the great features that should've
been on the DVDs!

To start off, we're going to
answer the biggest question anybody can possibly ask about the
Garfield and Friends show:What was the deal with the Klopman
Diamond anyway??
Yes, there's an answer to that now, and you have me alone to
thank. A website recently interviewed John Cawley, who's worked
on many animated shows including Garfield, and the site's forum
section asked for questions to ask him. There were many posts,
but mine somehow made it on the list. I got the Big Question
answered, and while he was there, I also asked about the bottle
of Cawley Drops from the "infomercial" Garfield cartoon
you don't remember.

J. Cawley:
The back story to the "Klopman Diamond" is simply that
Jim Davis and Mark Evanier found the name funny and dropped it in
whenever they could. As for "Cawley Drops", yes that
comes from my name. Up through the 1980s, it was a fun thing to
drop in caricatures and names of people on the staff. However, as
the 90s came on with more legal issues, studios began to worry
about such things and the trend is no longer quite as common.

That's it? That's the answer?
.........Maybe you weren't exactly expecting the meaning of life,
but I was.

Half the people when I was a kid
talked about how much they hated having to watch the stuff in the
middle with the pig. In America it was called "U.S.
Acres," in any other country it was called "Orson's
Farm" to get rid of the "USA" in the title.
"U.S. Acres"(or whatever you called it) was seldom as
funny as Garfield, so it must have just been something that was
thrown together in 10 minutes to fill space and give the show
"variety." Right? WRONG.
U. S. Acres was the name of a second strip Jim Davis himself
started in 1986, and all the characters in those cartoons were
100% invented by him. Several were funnier in their strip
incarnations, however. I'll go into this some more when I get to
making a "U.S. Acres" page, because I have the books
with the original strips in them....

Check this out.
On the Internet Movie Database, some idiot is ranting on the
"Garfield and Friends" entry page that the new DVDs
will not contain all the episodes. "ACCORDING TO TVTOME,
GARFIELD HAS 360 EPISODES AND THE DVDS WILL ONLY HAVE
120!!!" Remember TV Tome? That was the same site that promised a
Digimon episode of "House of Mouse." Their Garfield episode guide was listed by
cartoon(not by episode, the reason why they're getting 360 of
them), it didn't list every cartoon, it showed the wrong airdates
for many and in several places the list was out of order. For the
correct list, turn to the guy who wrote the show in
the first place. Yes. Mark Evanier made
a Garfield and Friends episode list on his own site. In addition
to that, he's also posted his experiences with the show
AND an EPISODE SCRIPT.
That would be enough bonuses for any DVD set, but Fox has yet to
approach him about adding anything to them.

For those of you who just came to this page through Wikipedia and already saw those other links...hey, where do you think they got them?

In another part of his site that
you probably won't find, Mark makes a comment about an earlier
show he worked on that, though he might not have realized it,
reveals the exact reason for the existence of three bears who
were constantly trying to force a lesson down Garfield's throat;
the lessson of "if you ever disagree, it means that you are
wrong."
When you think about it, that was a strange message to be
constantly delivering. "You must always agree with the
group" is something I've never heard preached in any real
educational show. And why would it be? All those shows shout the
opposite: to be yourself. And what if the group wanted to take
drugs or something?
It was actually an inside joke. Listen to Mark tell about his experiences writing for 80's cartoon shows:

Consultants were brought in and we, the folks who
were writing cartoons, were ordered to include certain
"pro-social" morals in our shows. At the time,
the dominant "pro-social" moral was as follows: The
group is always right...the complainer is always wrong.

This was the message of way too many eighties'
cartoon shows. If all your friends want to go get pizza and
you want a burger, you should bow to the will of the majority and
go get pizza with them. There was even a show for one
season on CBS called The Get-Along Gang, which was
dedicated unabashedly to this principle. Each week,
whichever member of the gang didn't get along with the gang
learned the error of his or her ways.

It's funny that I've lived for 22 years and
never connected the Buddy Bears to the Get-Along Gang. I really
should have. Evanier actually received a complaint letter from a network standards board in regards to the Buddy Bears making fun of them. (It wasn't CBS, though.)

If you checked out Mark's list, you might have
noticed many, many later cartoons that you might not remember.
The reason for that is, they were never shown again. After season
5, a syndication package was put together and every Garfield
run-through on any other station since has used this package. The
package contains only the first 73 episodes; there were 121. The
Cawley Drops that I mentioned up there were seen on a later
episode.
Now that the DVDs are coming, those later cartoons will be seen
for the first time in a decade, so it might make it moot that
I've had them on tape for all this time. I have seasons 4-7 of
Garfield on tape, commercials and all. The truth is, in Season 7
the show started running out of ideas, reusing old plots and
making 2-parters out of cartoons that could have had their
stories told in 1. They would have done a Season 8, ideas or not,
but CBS wanted to pay less money. You know how important money is
to Jim Davis....
Anyway, here's some of what you missed in seasons 6 and 7:Most of the cartoons involving Garfield's
show-only girlfriend Penelope
A pushy pig named Aloysius took charge of several Orson cartoons
in season 7 and bean-counted every scene, to the annoyance of
everyone. His catchphrase: "THAT'S NOT RIGHT!!"
Garfield gained a bird friend who was apparently named
"Ludloaf" if my ears are correct. He felt too sorry for
this little bird to eat it and always had to dig him out of
trouble.
The singing ants who ruined Jon's picnic in season 5 returned in
season 7. Oddly, the question Mr. Evanier is most asked on his
website is, "Who did the ant song?"
The "Kitty Council" busts Nermal for being too
cute to tolerate.
Season 7 kicked out the "Party" theme for some hip-hop
piece of garbage. Maybe a season 8 wouldn't have been a
good idea if this had been used another year....

I also have tapes of repeats of
several 1-3 episodes, and this is important too because
many of the "quickies" were also cut out in
syndication. Every U.S. Acres (Orson's Farm, whatever)
Quickie was cut out, as well as Screaming with Binky.
This was the most tragic loss of the whole thing. Every
week there was this one short where someone would be
doing something important, and Binky would come in and
scream at the top of his lungs, ruining it. My whole
family loved "Screaming with Binky" and it was
a tragedy to not only see it disappear after season 3,
but never appear again in reruns. I have several on tape,
however. Here are the Binky screams I can gather:

Binky runs onstage and screams
right when a ballerina is about to catch another one in midair.
"GEEEE, THAT WASN'T VERY GRACEFUL!!!"

A sand castle builder is about to reach the World's Record when
Binky screams, he gets startled, and falls off his scaffold,
crushing his castle. "OOPS! GUESS YA NEED MORE PRACTICE,
RIIIIIGHT??"

A diamond cutter is about to cut the Klopman Diamond in two and
must hit it just right, or else it will shatter into dust. Binky
runs in and screams at him right when he hits the diamond.
"GEE! LOOKS LIKE YA BLEW IT!"

An expert pizza chef is throwing dough into the air when Binky
comes in and screams, "HEEEEY PIZZA MAKER!!!" He's
chased out of the restraunt by the angry chef, still covered in
dough and waving a rolling pin. "I'D LIKE IT TO GO,
PLEEEEASE!!!"

It's revealed Binky has laryngitis. Garfield is thrilled, but
then he's blasted by a "HEEEEEY, CAAAAT!!" "I
thought you said you--" "I do! But I also have great
stereo equipment!" "HEEEEEEY, CAAAAAT!!!!"

Garfield announces he has earplugs, so Binky can't bother him
this week. Binky screams at Garfield, but he hears nothing. Binky
sadly walks away, then Jon comes out of the house:
"Garfield, time for dinner!"
"He can't bother me because he can't scream at me!"
"If you don't come in now I'll just give it to Odie!"
"These are GREAT earplugs."
"Okay, have it your way!"
"Worked like a charm. Hey, I wonder when Jon'll have my
dinner ready."

An animator is working on Garfield and Friends when Binky comes
in and screams, making him nervous. A badly-drawn Garfield says
to a badly-drawn Binky, "I HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY."

CBS viewers of Garfield will probably
also remember the guy seen to the left. This guy was on
all of CBS's Saturday Morning bumpers from 1990 to 1994.
He also showed up in a Sprite ad, so he must have come
from somewhere, but wherever that would be, I have no
clue. According to the ad's copyright information, his
name was "Fido Dido."

INTERNATIONAL GARFIELD
If you lived in Latin America and turned on Garfield, you would
get a Spanish-dubbed version of the show....which differed
slightly. Some of Garfield's logo box quips were not used in the
Spanish dub because they referenced CBS, Heathcliff, or something
else that viewers in the region wouldn't be familiar with. Jon
Arbuckle was translated as Jon Bonachón in the dub, Liz as Lisa,
Alouisus as Alagüichus and Nermal as Telma. (Telma?)

Madman Murray was Loco Murray,
the Weasel was La Comadreja, the Buddy Bears were Los Osos
Amigosos (this is gramatically incorrect for Spanish; it's a
pun), and Orson was....Orson. The farm animals kept their names,
but when they referred to their species ("And the winner of
the Orson Award is....Bo Sheep!") they would say the Spanish
name of that animal. The weird exception to this was Roy...he was
called "Roy Rooster" in English for no known reason.

Most translated programs in
that time period couldn't afford translating signs and written
words into Spanish via computer pasting tricks...so whenever a
title card appeared or a written message showed, a Spanish voice
would be dubbed in that would tell what the words said.
For the first three seasons, U.S. Acres was called (in voice
over) "En la Granja," which meant "At the
farm." In later seasons, the voice calls it "La Granja
de Orson", the direct Spanish translation of "Orson's
Farm."

The countries with Spanish as
their official language got this version of the show, and they got
it uncut. None of the cuts made to the syndicated version in
America happened elsewhere....viewers in Mexico can still see
Screaming with Binky on TV to this day.

Fact of amusement:
In the dub, Nermal referred to himself as "La gatita más
bonita del mundo" (world's cutest she-kitten). This wasn't
fixed until the final two seasons. Even the translators for other
countries couldn't tell Nermal was a guy!

Fact of amusement
#2: In the Orson's Farm quickie following
"Attack of the Mutant Guppies," the guppies leave with
the remark "Let's see if we can get a guest spot on the
Muppet Babies, whaddya say."
In the Spanish dub they say they want to get on Sabado Gigante.
Which, if you don't know by now, is a very popular variety
program among the Hispanic Ones that bares no relation to Muppet
Babies whatsoever.

Muchas Gracias to Andrés Sanhueza for
the information in this section.

DVD COMPARISONS
The DVD versions of Garfield look somewhat different from what's
been shown on TV, at least in America. By that I mean, for
whatever reason they had, they used the international prints.

Original CBS broadcast from 1990

Exact same quickie on the vol. 2
set

Was it a mistake? No.....you don't make the
same mistake five times in a row. This was intentional, and as
for a possible clear reason, I'm stumped. It might have been so
they didn't have to make completely different versions for a
release outside of the United States....but they haven't released
these sets outside of the US at all!

There's another major difference, but it only
has to do with the final season, collected in Volume 5. As I said
previously, in season 7 Garfield and Friends was given a
new "hipper" theme song that sounded terrible. When I
played Volume 5, I found the bad theme was not there, replaced
with the "party" theme everyone knows. This theme wasn't used outside of America, and again, these are international copies. Or maybe the creators
hated that final theme song just as much as I did.
That's one change I can live with, really. If you're from elsewhere, or you grew up with the syndicated Garfield, you don't want
to hear what CBS used in 1994.

"Hey, how come Garfield didn't say anything at the end of that intro? Was every Season 7 episode shown like that?" No...because searching through hours of videotape is a pain, I brought everyone the first recording of this theme I could find, which was also the first time it was ever aired. That day, CBS made a mistake and left out Garfield's variable tagline. It was fixed later.

ADVERTISING
When I deliver a total nostalgia trip, I
DELIVER, folks. In addition to Mr. Dido, we're also about to
revisit the typical advertising that ran during a Garfield hour.
The most prominent thing about this era was the sheer
unbelievable volume of ads for ROBOT BABIES.

How on Earth did I ever tolerate
all this without going completely crazy? Every other ad during
Garfield was for a robot doll which did two or three specific
functions. Some off-camera woman would sing a goopy love song
while a little girl would gingerly cradle a plastic baby and kiss
its forehead. I never asked the girls at my school about this,
but they must have had a strange desire to give birth, yet
remained barren in their pre-pubescent bodies. They were so
desperate for a child that they started buying evil-looking
robotic babies in droves, each one claiming to be more
"real" than the last. There's a movie plot in there
somewhere....

Speaking of evil things that drove me
nuts, it's the BURGER KING KIDS CLUB. Ronald was annoying
as well, but he didn't need competition. The Kids Club
were a gang of diverse, wholesome, animated magic
children. I don't remember them ever really doing
anything or going on any adventures, just showing up as
some kind of "miracle" in a live-action Burger
King. The only one I could tolerate was Kid Vid, and they
did eventually shift focus to him, but they used the same
"gang" paper bag for far too long. The
relaunching of the concept as the "Big Kids
Meal" finally killed them off...or did it? YOUR WAY!
RIGHT AWAY! AT BURGER KING NOW!!

Do you remember that Little Caesar's
ad where the Little Caesar puppets played "Pizza
Pizza" to the tune of "Wooly Bully"? That
was a good one all right. It was so good that it was
mentioned frequently at school for the time it ran, which
was a sign of a working ad campaign. Another ad popular
with kids was the original Dunkaroos ad, the one with the
song "Dunkaroos, Dunkaroos, ya don't just eat, ya
dunkaroo!" They didn't use that song again, and I
don't know why. Everyone was singing it.....

Of all the robot baby ads I had to sit through, this one's the
most infamous to me. If you don't remember it(and how can you
not), you're probably staring at the screen in disbelief.
"Is that baby doing what I think she's doing?" Yes,
she's taking a leak on TV, through a see-thru john, and it is
BRIGHT yellow! Only the syrupy song that plays in this ad calls
it "Buckets of LOOOOVE!" And it really is a syrupy
song, just like the rest of these, only it's singing about a doll
whose only function is to pee. If you're of this era, you
probably remember where you were the first time you saw this...

CBS used the same promos all year for each of its
shows. "The Amazing Live Sea Monkeys," from 1992, has
to be one of the weirdest entries. I wish I'd seen even a LITTLE
of this show...it was apparently ahead of its time. In this era
of Quiznos Spongmonkeys and that dancing Six Flags guy, I'm
convinced you could use these things, whatever they are, in an ad
campaign and it would take off faster than you can say,
"THEY GOT A PEPPER BAR!!"

And up until '92 they ran the old
Froot Loops ads where Toucan Sam would still follow his
nose and the Full Supply of Vitamin C would leap off the
packaging and into the bowl. I examined this ad's
copyright date. It was made in 1984! They were running ads eight years
old? Sam deserves a better effort than that...

This Barbie got Mattel in trouble. It
was the Barbie that said things like, "Math class is
haaard!" That particular recording wasn't used for
the ad, but feminist groups found out anyway, charged
Barbie with trying to make women look stupid, and forced
Mattel to change the direction the doll was going. In the
next few years they released Barbies where she was a
doctor, and involved in other respectable smart
professions, including the Star Trek Barbie. But for now,
Barbie was still a ditz with a 2-centimeter waist.

This is another Barbie that got Mattel
in trouble, but it's not because she was stupid...okay,
maybe she still was. She was wearing rollerblades that
shot out sparks when you glided her on any surface. ON
PURPOSE.
After several little girls blew up when they skated
Barbie around hairspray and gasoline and gassy men,
Mattel admitted that maybe the Rollerblade Barbie was a
mistake.

Unlike Burger King, McDonalds aired separate
Ronald-free ads to appeal to older children. This one goes way
back...even before "McWorld!" They used to do ads which
were simply a bunch of young teens sitting at a McDonalds and
talking. This guy is one of those teens, and he's having a dream
where he's 100 feet tall and he stomps downtown, picks up the
McDonalds and demands food. He's woken up by his friend who says,
"Hey Cosmo, how about a BIG MAC??" And there you have
it, Kramer isn't the only person in the world named
"Cosmo."

If you don't know what THIS is, you
are the saddest person in the world.

I could review ads all day, but this page
really has to end. So to cap it all off, it's time for the
complete LYRICS TO THE ORIGINAL THEME SONG! Too many have
forgotten it, but my and my cousin had it memorized. Without
further ado, here it comes:

Friends are there,
To help you get started,
To give you a push on your way!

Friends are there,
To turn you around,
Get your feet on the ground for a BRAND NEW DAY!

To pick you up when you're down! BOOM! BOOM!
To help you swallow your pride,
When somethin' inside's
Gotta break on through to the OTHER SIIIIIIDE!

Friends are someone you can open up to,
When ya feel like you're ready to FLIP!
When you've got....the world on your shoulders,
Friends are there to GIVE YOU A TIP!

Friends are there when you need them,
They're even there when you don't,
For a walk in the park,
Or a shot in the dark,
Friends are there....
"I don't care"....
But friends will care....for yooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!